The Tricolor Man with a Plan
by AMarguerite
Summary: Otherwise known as, "Five Times Enjolras had a Plan and One Time He Didn't." Les Mis/ MCU AU where Enjolras is a skinny kid from Marseilles who, via a mix of super soldier serum and Vitarays, becomes Captain France, the leader of an elite group of Resistance fighters.


A/N: This verse was created by kcrab88 and treblemirinlens. I believe the tumblr tag is "Captain France AU," if you want to see the nifty photo sets and super hero outfits they respectively made. The joke about Enjolras having no time for another person's heterosexuality is arryazzard's. Thanks, as ever, to my beta Pip, particularly for help with the "No Plan At All" section. You're a brick, old chum!

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One

There wasn't much a skinny kid from the docks of Marseilles could do in the Resistance, but Enjolras bore every weight he could on his narrow shoulders. His best friend Courfeyrac had gone up north to join the Maquis. Enjolras had stayed in Marseilles, where he told himself he was doing work as important as anyone else's.

His role in the grand plan was easy. Theoretically. Enjolras was to go pick up an escaped Jewish doctor and his adopted daughter from the rendezvous point and drive them into Marseilles proper. The girl would be hidden away in a convent school, her father in the convent's winding medieval gardens.

While he was waiting at the docks, a drunken Nazi sympathizer was harassing one of the women trying to haul in that day's catch by herself, since her husband had been sent off to a work camp. The sympathizer said something to her about making a little extra income now that her husband was away, and, knowing that Combeferre would never forgive him if he didn't intervene, Enjolras told the sympathizer to stop it. This went about as well as it could be expected (which was not very).

Enjolras knew savate. Theoretically. All that he could effectively do was block another person's punches. He was certainly doing a lot of that now.

"The more things change," said a familiar voice, the consonants dragged out in the accent chantant of the South, "the more things stay the same."

Enjolras's assailant whirled around. Courfeyrac stood there, grinning, and punched him in the face. The assailant staggered sideways, and Courfeyrac, always willing to fight dirty, tripped him. The assailant inelegantly crawled several feet before running off.

Courfeyrac doffed his beret to the lady, who blushed and turned her attention to her catch muttering, "Where there's Monsieur Enjolras there's always you, Monsieur Courfeyrac."

"Always," said Enjolras, catching his breath.

"Always." Courfeyrac slung an arm around his shoulders. "Sometimes I think you like getting beaten up."

Enjolras shook his head, though he smiled. There were a number of quasi-philosophic things he wanted to say, things he had thought of while sabatoging powerlines with Combeferre, but he was still struggling for breath and could say none of them.

Of course, by the time they'd reached the car, the Nazi sympathizer had found a couple of friends. Enjolras tried to help, but it became clear that Courfeyrac was exhausted from the drive (and from apparently stealing a milk truck somewhere in the Loire). Fortunately a massive man emerged from the cab, efficiently knocked together the heads of two of the sympathizer's friends, and lifted up the man kicking the garbage lid Enjolras was holding before him as a shield.

"This is not a good way to behave," said the man, sternly. "Do you have any ambitions in life?"

"Gack," said the attacker, choking.

The man set him down, and the attacker bolted.

Courfeyrac helped a young girl out of the cab of the truck and then climbed into the driver's seat. "Give my best to my father and sister, will you?"

"Not staying?" panted Enjolras, unsure if he was on the verge of an asthma attack.

"I have to get this back before Bahorel's father realizes Bahorel didn't get drunk and go joyriding. I'll see you." Courfeyrac waved out the window and drove off.

"It is good of you to help us," said the man.

Enjolras spat out a gob of blood. At least, that had been his intent. He asthmatically wheezed it out instead, causing the girl to drop to her knees in search of his inhaler. She found it before he did, and handed it to him.

Enjolras breathed in from the inhaler like a pipe (not that his health had ever permitted him to smoke one) and felt, again, the absence of Courfeyrac. Whenever Enjolras pulled out his inhaler, Courfeyrac pulled out his pipe, so that Enjolras felt less... other than he usually did. Less weak, less wanting, less unfit to fight for the ideals that powered him much better than his own broken and disloyal body. Eventually, Enjolras said, "I don't like bullies."

"I don't either," said the girl, in a stage whisper. "But Baba won't allow me to fight them. I don't mind. He's better at it than I am."

Enjolras looked curiously at the man before him. He had brilliantly white hair, a dark complexion, and the shoulder to waist ratio of a wedge of brie. Enjolras was barely the same weight as Cosette, from a lifetime spent in and out of hospitals. There was something familiar in the weary lines of the man's face. And there were not so many Moroccan Jews the Resistance was desperate to smuggle to Marseilles... "Are you... are you Dr. Valjean?"

The man hushed him at once, glancing over his broad shoulders to the dark streets behind him. "I go by Madeleine here. Madeleine the... botanist."

"I'm Cosette, then," said his daughter. "I hate my real name. Euphrosyne, ugh."

"My friend Combeferre is an engineer," said Enjolras. "He was going to go up to Montreuil-sur-mer to work in your lab before Paris fell." The attack had passed. Enjolras put away his inhaler. "I'll take you to Petit-Picpus. Fauchelevent has built you a lab there."

About a week later the girl sought him out. The painful thinness of her face had filled out a little, or, at least, her smile softened the harsh lines engraved upon it by war and loss and persecution. She skipped a little, to make the pleated skirt of her school uniform twirl out, and called out, "Citizen Enjolras!"

"You should be in school," said Enjolras, turning to smile at her anyways.

Cosette dismissed this with a little flip of her hand. "It's free period. I'm helping in the lab. I've been sent to find you. Your friend Combeferre said you lived somewhere around here." She looked curiously around the houses. "I think my friend Adelaide lives here too."

"You made friends already?"

"Of course!" She tossed her brown curls over her shoulder, dislodging her hat. Enjolras picked it up with another smile. It reminded him of Courfeyrac. Cosette regarded him thoughtfully. "Baba says there are many big men fighting. I said maybe they needed someone little, and Baba said, 'not you' which is silly because I am stronger than I look. So I know you are stronger than you look."

Enjolras gave her back her hat. "Thank you?"

Cosette popped her hat back on her head. "You want to fight."

Enjolras could not deny this.

"Citizen Combeferre's working on Baba," Cosette said, with perhaps misplaced confidence. "He's already gotten Baba to open up his research again. He'll get Baba to work on his serum again. Baba hasn't worked on it since my mother..." She trailed off.

There was no need to hide their conversation; the language barrier shielded them easily enough. Courfeyrac had written that in Parisian cafes, he'd heard groups of Parisians openly conducting black market deals, without the German at the next table understanding anything they were saying. Still, Enjolras felt better moving forward.

Cosette said, studying the flare of her skirt around her knees, as they walked on, "It's interesting, the serum. It amplifies everything. External, internal. A bully becomes a bigger bully. That's what happened when some HYDRA agents captured Baba and made him work for them. That's how my mother- well. She was Baba's assistant. The HYDRA agents wanted her to do things she didn't want to do, and Baba was too concerned that one of the police inspectors would out him as Jewish to ask why she was quitting. It... well. Even I don't know all the details. But you don't like bullies."

"No," said Enjolras, simply. "I never have. They halt the progress of mankind."

Cosette glanced at him sideways. "Rabbi Bienvenue told us, before France fell, that in times like these, strong men who know power all their lives, they lose respect for the people over whom they have power. People who have never had power before- those are the ones that know compassion. And if you are going to wield power justly, you need compassion."

"Yes," said Enjolras. "Now, the law of progress is, that monsters shall disappear before the angels, and that Fatality shall vanish before Fraternity. It is a bad moment to pronounce the word love. None-the-less, I do pronounce it. And I glorify it. We shall have no future if it is not ruled by love and compassion."

"Good," said Cosette, pleased. "I knew you'd be perfect."

It came as no surprise the next day when Combeferre stopped him in the street and said, "Enjolras- come to work with me. There's someone I want you to meet."

"I've met him," Enjolras said, simply, "And I will do it."

Combeferre did not quite catch this last. Occasionally he didn't catch what someone else was saying, when he was in the grip of a particularly interesting idea. "I immediately thought of you when Madeleine showed me his experiment. It might- it is not without risks-"

Enjolras put his hand on Combeferre's wrist. "I know what you're planning. And I will do it."

Two

It was not without risk, and it was not without pain either. But Enjolras knew what he was doing. Theoretically.

"I survived an early form of the serum," said Valjean. "This will hurt."

Enjolras nodded, once.

Valjean still looked worried and turned to talk with the small crowd of scientists and doctors and nuns clustered in the underground lab. Enjolras only knew Combeferre. Combeferre, tall and calm and capable, who had stayed to help the Strategic Scientific Reserve gain whatever toehold it could in Europe. He was talking to a slender, cheerful looking fellow of average height, with a brown complexion and dark hair and eyes. He was bundled in a number of sweaters under his lab coat. Combeferre noticed Enjolras's look of faint anxiety and walked over.

"Enjolras this is Joly. He'll be giving you the injections while I operate the switchboard."

"I know it's unusual to find Marseilles cold," said Joly, chipperly, "but I was born in Tahiti. This is too far from the equator for my blood. I don't know know you're not shivering to death in your undershirt." Enjolras appreciated Joly's deliberately cheerful stream of prattle, particularly since Joly needed no response. Joly kept up his ramble about his girlfriend (the best girl in the entire world) and his roommate (the best guy in the entire world) as he took Enjolras's vitals, gave him a shot of penicillin, and eased Enjolras into the strange container-like thing that contained Vitarays. Enjolras was still sorting out all of Joly's roommate's nicknames as he was strapped in.

"You can still pull out," Joly said, comfortingly, as a nun carefully wheeled forward a cart of syringes full of strangely colored liquid.

"I can do this," said Enjolras.

He shut his eyes as Joly explained to him that they would inject him in all his major muscle groups, and that the Vitarays would stimulate growth. He clenched his jaw at the injections. It stung everywhere all at once, as if he had been attacked by bees.

"Enjolras?" came Comebferre's worried voice.

Enjolras nodded, once.

Joly shut the lid of the container.

The bee stings had been nothing to this. Enjolras stayed silent as long as he could, straining to hear Combeferre calling out percentages. Enjolras could tell Combeferre was nervous; he kept calling out numbers with no reference to what, exactly, he was measuring. The pain increased but so did the light. Light, he thought dazedly, all things came from light and all returned to it. If he was to die here, if this pain was past bearing, at least he was in a tomb flooded with the dawn-

Voices, echoing and indistinct, filtered through the haze of light and pain.

Combeferre's voice Enjolras recognized first. He would have recognized Combeferre's voice anywhere. The straps loosened. Enjolras stumbled towards the sound of Combeferre's voice. He felt strangely off-center. He could still feel the Vitarays streaming out from the container, hitting his back, glancing off his... biceps? Since when did he have biceps?

He heard Cosette asking, "Is he ok? He was screaming and the- is he ok?"

"This was why I told you to go and play with Adelaide Courfeyrac," muttered her father.

"I'm fifteen, I'm too old to play," muttered Cosette.

Combeferre caught Enjolras under one arm; Valjean the other. Enjolras stared stupidly at the ground. It was much farther away than he was used to.

"Wow," said Cosette, staring wide-eyed. Valjean turned, disapprovingly, and Cosette pretended to be interested all the wires and machines behind Enjolras.

Enjolras glanced down at himself. His undershirt had ripped. He was also much more muscular than he had been. He felt the odd pull of his bicep as he moved his arm, and a flex of- abdominal muscles? He'd never had those before- as he tried to step forward.

"How do you feel?" asked Combeferre, anxiously.

"Taller."

"You're not wrong," said the Mother Superior, eyeing him. Then, when several of the younger nuns tittered, she turned to them saying, "What? I'm a nun, not blind."

The nurses all seemed strangely reluctant to help him find another shirt. Joly tutted at them and walked over to take Enjolras's pulse. "Pulse normal, oddly enough. Follow my finger with your eyes..." Joly trailed off, frowning. "Were you always this blond, Monsieur Enjolras?"

"It's the Vitrays," said Valjean, gesturing at his own, pure white hair.

The lab's errand boy, who had somehow gotten dirty since the nuns had cleaned him and stuffed him into a miniature lab coat and marched him downstairs said, "Oi! You there! You ain't supposed to be in here!" Then, with a look of genuine fear, he said, "Claquesous?"

"Here, you said your name was Le Cabuc, one of the medical students," said one of the nuns. The man had whirled around at the sound of Gavroche's voice; one of his hands was hidden.

"That's not Le Cabuc, Le Cabuc's from Vietnam," said Joly, all in a rush. Enjolras knew Joly was about to be shot before he finished speaking. Enjolras flung himself out from between Combeferre and Valjean and pushed Joly to the ground before anyone even heard the pistol shot.

Cosette screamed, while Enjolras waited ten precious seconds for an asthma attack that did not come. Enjolras looked up; Valjean was on his knees, clutching his upper arm with bloody fingers. There was blood in his white hair. Enjolras launched himself at Claquesous, seizing Claquesous's ill-gotten lab coat with one hand. Claquesous flung himself out of his coat.

The scuffle was long and vicious, Claquesous destroying half the lab before taking the lab assistant, Gavroche, captive. They shot at each other across Marseilles, until Enjolras swept Claquesous's leg around in a savate move that had never worked before and kicked Claquesous legs out from under him. Enjolras put a knee into Claquesous's lower back. "You have thirty seconds to think or pray."

Claquesous chose neither, and instead ate a cyanide tablet while hissing, "Hail Hydra!"

"De Gaulle will want you in London," said the Mother Superior, when Enjolras returned. "All of you. You leave tonight."

It had not exactly gone according to plan, thought Enjolras later that day, flinging himself on top of Cosette, so that machine gun fire from the Luftwaffe squad around their plane wouldn't harm her, but it was exciting to be in an airplane. He had always been fascinated by flight.

"This is exciting," said Joly's girlfriend, trying to load a machine gun while hiding behind several shot-up seats. It had surprised no one when Joly's girlfriend revealed herself to be an SSR agent, stationed in Marseilles to facilitate the extraction of strategically important captives. "Scientific advancement at its finest."

"Yeah, ok," said Cosette.

"Ever been in a dogfight, Cosette?" Musichetta pulled a parachute from under the seat. "Here, you might need this."

Cosette took it, but muttered, "I wish I'd just played with Adelaide Courfeyrac today."

"You have to grow up fast these days," Musichetta told Cosette, kindly. She eyed Enjolras with amusement. "Some people grow more literally than others."

Plan B

Grantaire made Enjolras uncomfortable, but no one could deny that he was a good artist.

"It will do about as much good as a cock on the Trojan horse," said Grantaire, setting aside his stick of charcoal to pick up a bottle of black market brandy.

Enjolras did not know how to react to this metaphor. Combeferre rolled his eyes and offered Enjolras a rifle. Enjolras put down the sword he'd been holding.

"No, no," said Grantaire, waving the bottle at them both. "That's not right either."

Musichetta groaned loudly. "Grantaire! It's a newsheet to inspire our brothers-in-arms in occupied France, not an entry into the Paris Salon."

"But it's not right," insisted Grantaire. "Propaganda has to be right or it doesn't work. I still think he should be shirtless-"

"No," said Enjolras. The red vest with gold braid was better in comparison. He looked over to where de Gaulle was frowning over Grantaire's previous sketches.

"How about a pike?" asked de Gaulle.

Grantaire swigged thoughtfully from his bottle. "We've done that already, though. Two pikes makes it look like the Resistance has no weapons at all. I mean, it doesn't, but I assume we don't want the Germans to know that."

Combeferre turned back to his office space, which had been gradually taken over by Howard Stark's leftover materials. It was almost a relief to be in the Blitz instead of the Occupation. The Occupation was a death of papercuts, a slow bleeding out that left one ennervated and irritable. There was still honor and fight in the Blitz. Being surrounded by action dulled the painful edge of Enjolras's worry he was not best using the gift he had been given. Just so that he had something other to do than stand and look meaningfully into the (unseen) horizon, Enjolras stepped off his pedestal and sorted through the junk on Combeferre's desk. "What's this?"

He pulled out a shield.

"Vibranium," said Combeferre, rapping a knuckle on the surface. "The name is fairly self-explanatory. It reflects vibrations. Stronger than steel and a third of the weight. Unfortunately, it's the rarest metal on Earth."

Enjolras slid the shield onto his right arm. It felt right.

"Wait," shouted Grantaire. "Hold it right there!"

Grantaire was unusually quick and produced a charcoal sketch in minutes. He turned around his easel to display it to de Gaulle and Enjolras. Enjolras saw himself masked, his blond hair streaming down to his shoulders, in a strange, skin-tight suit in a tricolor pattern, holding a tricolor shield.

"Ta da," said Grantaire. "Captain France."

"It's more you," said Musichetta, pleased.

"This is perfect!" exclaimed one of de Gaulle's aides. "This isn't just a poster, General. This is a franchise."

And so Enjolras was forced to watch a film version of Grantaire's sketch striding across a screen, imploring the Allies not to give up, and the Americans not to abandon them. Enjolras did not recognize himself in the images flickering in front of him. He returned to the bunker, dispirited, and went to visit the sickbay where Valjean was making his slow recovery.

Cosette was in her usual chair by her father's bedside, with one foot tucked under her, the other swinging back and forth. She was still dressed up from the movie premiere, and had her nose buried in several closely written manuscript pages.

"How is he?" asked Enjolras.

"He was awake for nearly an hour today," said Cosette, not looking up from her booklet. At Enjolras's raised eyebrow, she said, a little peevishly, "If you must know, an ex-pat wrote me some poems and they have taught me what it is to love."

"Really?" asked Enjolras. He was not very interested in her burgeoning heterosexuality, but felt that some response was required of him.

Cosette rolled up the pages and pretended to swat him with them. "I am sixteen now! I can accept love poetry if I wish!" She glanced at her father, enjoying enough opiates to successfully knock out an entire cavalry regiment, men and horses combined (provided neither bipeds nor quadrupeds were trained opium eaters). "It's not like Baba's ever awake long enough to object. I liked your last film. It was better even than the one where you played Lafayette while Laurence Olivier faked an American accent."

Enjolras sighed and sat on the spare chair. "I would have prefered to play Robespierre to Lafayette."

"The Americans wouldn't have joined if you'd played Robespierre. Lafayette's the one who helped George Washington." Cosette swung her other leg idly, and said, "Baba meant you for more than this, you know."

Enjolras knew. He remained silent for some minutes, leaning forward, his forearms balanced on his knees, his golden hair sliding forward to shield his expression. Cosette busied herself taking out two silver candlesticks and putting the stubs of candles in them. "It's Shabbat," she explained. Feuilly came in then, and murmured something to Cosette.

Cosette looked at Enjolras, a little troubled. "Feuilly usually comes in and reads the reports to Baba now."

"What's in them now?" asked Enjolras, trying to ask, 'What don't you wish me to hear?'

Feuilly looked down at his handful of telegrams. It was hard to believe that Feuilly had spent most of his life working in a factory. He was so interested in everything, so good at every task assigned to him, Enjolras found himself often distracted with admiration. "Nothing good. An entire Resistance cell has been captured. Instructions were standard. Everyone's asked to last forty-eight hours while we change passwords, meeting places, drop-offs-"

"Captured where?" asked Enjolras.

Feuilly consulted the cipher once again. Feuilly was too good not to know the location. Enjolras felt a creeping sense of dread, as cold as the first winter wind.

Eventually Feuilly said, "Paris."

"Do we know what's happened to a Courfeyrac- a Victor Courfeyrac?" His own voice sounded strange and distant to his ears.

Feuilly couldn't answer.

Five minutes later Combeferre came running up out of the bunker. "Enjolras! Do you plan to walk to Berlin?"

"I supposed I'd have to swim once I reached the Channel," said Enjolras, dryly.

"Courfeyrac's as much my friend as yours," said Combeferre.

"And you would stay?"

Combeferre shook his head. "No. I would, however, borrow Howard Stark's plane." He held up a metal ring thickly populated with keys. "With or without his permission."

Four

Prouvaire was a surrealist poet of no little renown, so Enjolras was not unduly worried to find him in a corner of a cell, muttering about Magritte. He put a hand on Prouvaire's shoulder and looked him in the eye. "I'm looking for another member of the Resistance- a Victor Courfeyrac."

The expression on Prouvaire's dark face was bleak and hit Enjolras harder than any of the guards had.

"Are you Enjolras?" asked an enormous fellow. "I'm Bahorel. I always heard you were... smaller."

"I was," Enjolras said, simply. "Do you know where they might have taken Courfeyrac?"

"They took some of us upstairs," said Bahorel, pointing. "Torture or experimentation- hard to tell. None of them returned. They only took Courfeyrac two days ago."

Enjolras broke the last of the locks on the cells with his shield. "The farthest of the guards are eighty metres out. There's a forest beyond. To get there, you'll need tanks- and fortunately, HYDRA has left an entire fleet of them through that door there."

A bald fellow that Enjolras later learned was Joly's lost roommate said, "That is a deceptively simple plan. I should warn you, there are more guards in the direction you're headed than the one we're headed."

"Thank you," said Enjolras, sincerely.

"I don't think you should thank me for it," said Bossuet, "unless you change your mind and decide not to run into your grave."

"Do you know what you're doing?" asked Bahorel.

But Enjolras had already leapt halfway up the steps. Several guards later Enjolras found the room where they had been keeping Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac, delirious, asked, "What time is it? What day is it?"

"I thought you were dead," was all Enjolras could think to say, shaken by the overwhelming power of his relief. But Musichetta's advice on prisoner extraction surfaced. He stole the helmet of one of the fallen guards and untied Courfeyrac at once.

"I thought you were shorter," said Courferyac. "Did you grow? But it has been nearly forty-eight hours. I may have shrunk. Either's possible. Also, you seem to have a halo." Courfeyrac paused. "No, my bad. The building's on fire behind you."

Enjolras glanced around the room. There was a bay window overlooking the formerly orderly rows of tanks- "Can you stand, Courfeyrac?"

"I can fake it."

Enjolras shouldered Courfeyrac and, holding his shield before him, crashed out the window.

"Ceci n'est pas une porte," said Prouvaire, as Courfeyrac and Enjolras landed in a shower of glass in the courtyard below.

"Very true," said Courfeyrac. "But you're a surrealist, Prouvaire. You, of all people, ought to see doors where none commonly exist."

"Watch out!" exclaimed Bahorel, pulling them all out of the way.

Joly's roommate had successfully led the assault on the big guns. Capturing the HYDRA tanks proved easier than using them, however. Bahorel, Prouvaire, Courfeyrac, and Enjolras watched, mystified, as a HYDRA tank slowly, but unstoppably, reversed into the building. Bossuet popped out of the top, when the back half of the tank was buried in rubble. "Hm. Well, we can turn this to our advantage, I'm sure. Need a lift?"

There was a clatter from inside Bossuet's tank and Combeferre popped up next to him. "Lesson learned, we leave the driving to me. Enjolras behind you- Panzercorps!"

Bossuet disappeared down in the tank, to try and move one of the gun turrets.

"Waitwaitwait!" exclaimed Courfeyrac. He was best when he was improvising. He ripped the helmet off of Enjolras's head.

The Panzercorps were blinded and fell back with startled and confused shouts of "Was ist das!" and "Gott in Himmel!"

"Hm," said Combeferre, not lowering his pistol, but squinting in Enjolras's direction. "That's an interesting side-effect of the Vitarays."

When he shared this finding with Cosette and Valjean (in his rare hour of lucidity), Cosette glanced up and to the right as if laboring to recall some detail long forgotten. "I think it must be," she said, slowly. "My mother's hair was that color, and it really oughtn't to have been. I mean, I'm Jewish and that ordinarily comes through one's mother." Cosette lifted one of her brown curls and sighed. "Maybe I should make a Vitaray chamber-"

"No," said Enjolras and Valjean, at once.

Five

The plan had been simple enough, though they all knew the dangers. Bossuet had cracked far too many jokes about the fate of overambitious Frenchmen soldiering into Russian winters for anyone to be ignorant of the risks.

"You're the only one with a connection to Napoleon, my eagle," said Courfeyrac. "You'd better be careful or your campaign will end like his."

"Hardly," replied Bossuet. "I'm the only one of you not from the South. Or Southern hemisphere. Unlike the rest of you, I am used to the snow."

"I'm still in," said Bahorel, leaning back in his seat. Prouvaire poked him in the arm. "Jehan and I- we're both in."

"As am I," said Bossuet.

"And me," chimed in Joly. "I'll come as medic."

Enjolras looked around the table, feeling warm and happy. "Feuilly?"

"Of course," he replied. Enjolras had only to look at Combeferre.

"Try and stop me from coming," said Combeferre.

"I wouldn't," said Bossuet. "You have very clearly shown an ability to master highly advanced technology after seeing it once."

"Will you?" Enjolras asked Courfeyrac, when all the others had left.

"What, follow Captain France to the gates of hell?" asked Courfeyrac, green eyes on the glass of red wine before him. He looked up with a tired version of his usual grin. The forty-four hours of HYDRA experimentation and interrogation had changed him. "I'll follow the skinny kid from Marseilles who never gave up. I'll follow my best friend."

Enjolras clasped his hand.

About a month later Enjolras had cause to do it again, as they fought desperately on a speeding train near the Russian border, trying to capture Dr. Zola.

Courfeyrac had ziplined down onto the same compartment of the train with him. Courfeyrac was their best sharpshooter, aside from Combeferre (and Combeferre had split off from them early on, and was busy trying to hijack the train).

Enjolras was momentarily stunned by a blast that ripped open the train compartment. Courfeyrac, seeing this, picked up Enjolras's shield and began firing at once. But a pistol was no match for HYDRA's latest weapon. Courfeyrac was blasted out of the hole in the compartment.

Enjolras flung his shield at the HYDRA agent with the blaster and, as soon as he heard the now familiar gong-like sound of the vibranium shield hitting its target, he leapt toward the hanging, aluminum side of the train. Courfeyrac was hanging on desperately to the railing, but still called out, cheerfully enough, "I've lost another hat."

"Let's not lose you," Enjolras called, the wind whipping away his words as soon as they left his throat. "You're harder to replace. Grab my hand!"

The next few moments Enjolras would re-live his entire life. There would never be a night where he would sleep without feeling the phantom grip of Courfeyrac's fingers around his wrist, the unfamiliar look of panic, the striking greenness of Courfeyrac's eyes as he realized he was about to fall.

"I've got-"

The train lurched as Combeferre finally seized hold of the train's controls.

Courfeyrac's gloved fingertips slid briefly against the inside of Enjolras's wrist and then-

Nothing.

It was, by all accounts but Enjolras's, a successfully implemented plan. But when they returned to London, Enjolras sat in a shelled out cafe with an untouched bottle of wine before him. Combeferre sat with him. There was nothing to be said. Nothing could shake a moment so burned into Enjolras's soul: the face, familiar as his own, distorted by panic, the slide of Courfeyrac's fingertips against his wrist, the absence of warmth, of sound, and then of sight, until the friend who flared as bright and vivid as flame in his memory, was nothing more than a darkening frozen point, growing smaller, falling away from him forever.

No Plan at All

There were times when Enjolras wished he had frozen to death. This strange new world was not his own. When he visited Combeferre in the quiet nursing home in the suburbs of Paris, Combeferre had been delighted, exclaiming, "Enjolras! It's been so long- you're alive!"

"The serum," said Enjolras, shocked to see his friend was no longer young, but old and shaking and confined to a wheelchair. Then, ten minutes later Combeferre looked at Enjolras again and his eyes filled with tears. "Enjolras! You're alive? After all this time?"

"The serum," said Enjolras, and the words felt like stones in his mouth.

His found family had lived and died without him. Cosette, the most Jewish of grandmothers now, had made one of her granddaughters drive him to Pere Lachaise to look at the tombstones of his friends. (She also made him a kosher quiche lorraine which, Enjolras had to admit, was delicious.) Joly and Bossuet had been buried side by side, inseparable in death as they had been in life, with Musichetta on Joly's other side. Bahorel and Grantaire not far from them. Prouvaire had been buried in his native Martinique. Feuilly had died when the Manchurian group had been captured. No one knew what had happened to his body.

Cosette was "with it" as she chipperly informed him, and taught him how to use a smartphone and how to sign up for an email account and showed him scholarly articles about Prouvaire's later poems, Facebook albums of Musichetta and Joly's children, and YouTube clips of the film, "Captain France: The Man Behind the Legend." ("I did like that they cast Virginie Ledoyen as me," Cosette admitted, "though I was hardly that pretty at fifteen.") She showered him with food. And with each bite Enjolras knew that this was her way of showing her love, of telling him, 'you are not alone,' and 'there is still some of your family left.' Cosette's husband, a frequently bewildered retired lawyer named Marius, did not quite understand why this blond goy kept showing up to their Shabbat meals. But Cosette would clear her throat and look at the silver candlesticks gleaming with the Shabbat candles and one grandchild or other would distract their grandfather.

But, still, it was not the same. Cosette was not a teenager any longer. She still had her spunk, she still complained about her hair color, but she had lived a full life. She had gone to university, had married, had children, had helped to found S.H.I.E.L.D., had retired comfortably to the Marais. Enjolras had thought of her as a sister, not a grandmother.

So when Nicholas Fury asked him to join the Avengers Initiative, Enjolras had his conversation with Combeferre again, took a basket full of kosher pastries as carry on, and flew to the United States. At first Enjolras was resistant to the team so oddly cobbled together. He'd had no choice in these lieutenants. And, if he'd had his choice, he would not pick a prince defending an apparently intergalactic monarchical regime, a billionaire perfectly content to not only support but uphold the capitalistic system in America that kept millions below the poverty line, a scientist (so unlike Combeferre or Valjean!) whose discoveries had so far only caused destruction instead of progress, an assassin formed by a Communism that was not what Marx and Engels had envisioned at all, and a man with a bow and arrow. (Enjolras found he had no ideological clashes with Clint, but it still seemed to him incredibly stupid to be shooting aliens with technology whose heyday had been the battle of Agincourt.)

However, Enjolras was even more resistant to the rule of alien fascists. "The more things change, the more things stay the same," Enjolras heard Natasha say. Enjolras kept his eyes on Loki who, for whatever reason, seemed content enough in his glass cage. He could still see Natasha's reflection in the window next to him and, in the fading light, her hair was almost, almost the color of Courfeyrac's. He met her gaze in the wavering reflection in the window.

"Nice speech you gave there, Cap," drawled Stark, from behind them. "Did you come up with that beforehand, or was it all off the top of your head? I guess you had a lot of time to think as a Capsicle. Where did you learn German?"

Enjolras said nothing. Stark reminded him a little of Grantaire, now that he'd seen him in action.

In the window, he could see Natasha looking at him. "They didn't tell me the USSR had fallen for years," she offered. It was a calculated revelation, of course. There was nothing about Natasha that was not calculated. "I know a little of what it's like..."

"There was supposed to be progress," Enjolras said, eventually. "We fought then, so that you would not have to fight. And would not have to fight this battle in particular. We had hoped the twenty-first century would be..." He absently reached out a hand, but his old certainty was gone, sliding away from him like water out of a cupped palm. "Happy."

Bruce was gentle, for all his famous temper, and told Enjolras of all the improvements that had been made. Thor's bruising enthusiasm started to remind Enjolras of Bahorel. (It helped too, that Thor was already troubled by Asgard's system of government and was easily persuaded to consider abdicating and instituting a representative democracy instead.) And when they fought together, Enjolras could warm himself on the flame of his former certainty once more. It felt as good as putting his shield on his arm to start noticing the strengths of his teammates: Bruce's raw power, Thor's willingness to help, Tony's inventiveness, Natasha's cleverness, Clint's observational skills. It felt even better to deploy them, as quickly and efficiently as he had any of his lieutenants back in the war. The Avengers, in his mind, became their own team, not pale and wanting reflections of his old one.

It was enough but not enough. Thor was not Bahorel any more than Tony was Grantaire or Natasha was Courfeyrac. The ghosts of his friends would cloud his vision at the strangest times, and then Enjolras would withdraw behind his smiling reserve and wonder to himself just what he was going to do.

As it turned out, Fury provided the plan again. Fury asked him to go to DC.

Enjolras did.

He felt he owed America, for helping to win a war he hadn't been able to fight. Besides which, Paris was too full of ghosts. It was something he had difficulty expressing, since ghosts seemed to follow him anyways, but he ended up blurting out the whole to a VA counselor he'd met while jogging.

"Hey man," said Sam, as they jogged and sneezed their way through the tunnels of cherry blossom branches by the Tidal Basin. It was too early for tourists, but they still kept having to weave around other runners. "We all carry things back with us from the wars. It's up to you how you're going to carry it. A suitcase, or a little man purse or..." Sam sneezed. "Damn pollen. You got any Claritin?"

"Surprisingly, super soldiers don't need Claritin," said Enjolras, but he obligingly jogged to CVS. He thought, absently, that the run should have been harder since he was carrying so much. But he carried losses, not injuries. Absences had no weight, just pain.

But lost things had could always be found again. Or so said the fortune cookie Cosette had been given while in the remnants of DC's Chinatown. When Enjolras came back from that meal, leaving Cosette to Skype with her grandchildren in a downtown Mariott, Fury was bleeding in Enjolras's least favorite armchair.

At the hospital later, Cosette listened to what had happened with a bright, keen gaze un-dulled by time. "Soviet made and untraceable," she murmured, in French. "Where have I heard that before?"

Natasha looked at her. Cosette looked at Natasha.

Enjolras looked at both of them but implicitly understood that he was not really part of the conversation.

Cosette neatly rolled up the sleeve of her elegant black dress and showed Natasha a scar on her forearm. "Algeria. He came at me with a knife."

Natasha pulled up her shirt, to display a scar on her torso. "Afghanistan. He shot his target through me." Then, after a moment, Natasha said, in perfectly fluent French, "No one else in S.H.I.E.L.D. thought this guy could exist. He was a ghost."

"Of course they didn't," said Cosette, with a bitterness Enjolras had never seen before. It was again painful to realize he had missed so much of Cosette's life. "I was just a girl then. I couldn't be trusted. This was all before de Beauvoir, you know. But I see she didn't change as much as we had hoped. Why would they trust the evidence of two of their most successful field agents? If womensaw the Winter Soldier, they were seeing things."

"If by 'thing' you mean the assassin I chased over the rooftops of Dupont," said Enjolras, dryly. "A ghost you say? A ghost maybe- he was like a ghost to me. One minute there, then..." That flash of panic across Courfeyrac's face and then, nothing. Why did he remember that? Enjolras shook his golden head. "Then he was gone."

Enjolras saw the Winter Soldier again, after an unfortunate multi-car pileup by Navy Yard. Enjolras regretted the destruction of Sam's car. Sam had all of Combeferre's gentleness and all of Courfeyrac's charm and did not deserve to have the Winter Soldier literally take the wheel and then shoot up the leather interior. "I got this!" Sam yelled, rolling down 695.

Enjolras had to trust him on that one, since he tumbled from 695 onto a Metrobus below. When he came to, there was the Winter Soldier, his metal arm gleaming. Cosette distracted the Winter Soldier with a spray of machine gun fire (it did not surprise Enjolras in the least that Cosette knew how to operate a machine gun) that blasted off his goggles. Sam apparently had got it, since he was capably defending Cosette from the HYDRA agents still on the bridge. Enjolras helped evacuate the bus while Nastasha had a go, but as soon as Enjolras found his shield, he joined her. The Winter Soldier shot at him, as he had shot at Natasha. The Winter Soldier flipped a knife out of his belt and tried to stab him, as he had Cosette. Enjolras had the benefit of their experience; he had been expecting them and blocked the attacks. And, with a quick, savate kick he had learned from Grantaire, he managed to momentarily knock over the Winter Soldier.

The Winter Soldier's strange muzzle fell off and he rolled halfway down M Street before he reached out his metal hand and managed to skid to a stop. The Winter Soldier looked up.

"Courfeyrac?" Enjolras said, stunned.

He was understandably confused. Courfeyrac had always inspired feline comparisons. Despite his skill with improvisation, he proved unimaginative when it came to costumes. At every Mardi Gras since they were five, Courfeyrac had dressed up as some species of cat. Right now, he looked like nothing more than a raccoon.

Surely, thought Enjolras, stupid from shock and a creeping sense of terror that something had happened to his best friend, Courfeyrac would be better at applying eyeliner than this fellow. This couldn't be Courfeyrac. Even though the long brown hair, as warm a shade as one could find without going to red, looked like Courfeyrac's when Courfeyrac had been trying to imitate one of Dumas's chevaliers and had been growing it out at university. Even though the black smudges around those eyes made the green as vibrant as they had been when Courfeyrac had looked up at Enjolras on that speeding train. Even though the unmuzzled face was as familiar to Enjolras as his own.

But he had hesitated too long. The Winter Soldier stood up, expression mullish. "Who the hell is Courfeyrac?"

And Enjolras had no idea what to do.


End file.
